Google is adding more ways for businesses to highlight how they’re catering to changing customer needs and behaviors as a result of COVID-19, with new options for listings on your Google My Business profile related to pick-up options, service changes and more.
Google has been adding more ways for businesses to display updated options and service offerings, like ‘curbside pick-up’ in ads, and changes to business hours as a result of COVID impacts. It’s now providing more tags that can be added to business listings.
“You can now highlight dining service attributes like “Dine-in” and “Takeout.” Soon you’ll be able to feature retail service attributes, like “In-store shopping” and “Curbside pickup.”
‘Curbside pickup’ in this respect relates to organic listings, not ads, where, as noted, the option was already available.
And these could be increasingly important – according to Google, searches for “curbside pick up” have grown globally by more than 3,000% year over year, while searches for “takeout restaurants” have grown globally by over 5,000% in the same time period.
That, of course, makes perfect sense, but if you’re not listing these options on your Google My Business profile, you could be missing out on web traffic.
To implement these changes, you need to log into Google My Business and update the relevant fields in your business profile options.
Google also says that searches containing “available near me” have grown by more than 2x across regions and categories – and catering to these more specific shopping options, Google’s also adding “Pickup later” tags for local inventory ads (second screenshot above).
The listings are designed to reduce in-store shopping time, and tap into these rising consumer behaviors.
As reflected in the search data above, these are important updates, and it’s worth ensuring that your Google My Business profile reflects the latest info and updates in order to tap into evolving consumer behaviors.
Really, these are logical progressions, and the more you can align your digital listings with audience need, the better off you’ll be, in terms of maximizing response.
